Fiction: Episode or Story, Part 1

I was looking through my short fiction for a piece to submit to a competition when I came across two personal experience stories. I’d sent each of them out to several literary journals over the years, where they were rejected for publication or failed to win, place, or show in competitions. I had revised each piece when it was rejected, thinking that the voice, style, opening, or some other technical aspect might be at fault.

Did revision improve the stories? Yes. The writing become tighter, more focused, and richer in sensory details.

Did that get them published? Nope, and I know why: I wasn’t addressing the underlying problem. These were episodes, not stories in which the main character struggles to resolve one or more problems. I had simply retold, in as literary a way as I could, events from my life.

One was a funny (in retrospect) episode on an airplane sitting at the gate at Albuquerque, its takeoff delayed by fog in Phoenix (yup, Phoenix), and how the flight attendants got a crazed passenger to leave of his own accord. The other revolved around the parallel scars on my father’s forehead, the result of his weekend-warrioring with the weeds between our garage and our neighbors’.

Fun to tell to fellow writers over dinner after a meeting, but not stories.

Okay, that’s the first question: Is your piece a story, or is it episodic? The way to evaluate that is to determine whether or not it has the elements of a story. Is there is a main character with a thwarted desire who must struggle against increasing odds and who may or may not win. Is there something at stake? If so, you may have a story.

I’ll leave you to assess your own work and post more on this issue soon.